Saturday, December 12, 2009

Whoever they may be…

…the "smarter elements in Washington DC" are a little slow on the uptake. Matt Yglesias...

The smarter elements in Washington DC are starting to pick up on the fact that it's not tactical errors on the part of the president that make it hard to get things done, it's the fact that the country has become ungovernable.

They're a little off-target, too. The notion that the country "has become" ungovernable is a bit too passive. It makes it sound like the current situation is some kind of natural consequence of constitutional government or something. The notable fact about the situation isn't that it's hard to get things done, but rather that anything gets done at all when the Republican Party is devoted to making sure that nothing gets done. Obstructionism has been the central theme of Republican politics since the party got Newtered back in the nineties. Americans would only give Republicans a chance, (disgraced former Speaker) Newt Gingrich determined, if Republicans created failure. He wasn't entirely wrong.

Of course, given a chance, Republicans failed, but Republicanism today has nothing to do with governance. It's about gaining power through obstruction and exploitation. Power to do what? Very damn little, in fact, other than channel the product of working and middle class labor into the pockets of their corporate sponsors. They don't care about your job, your health or your home. They care about power and the pocketbooks of the people who purchase it for them.

The country hasn't become ungovernable. The Republican Party is hell-bent on making the country ungovernable though. That's why I continually insist that…

1 Comments:

When St. Ronnie said "government is the problem", what he really meant was "the way I'll govern is the problem". Dubya took that approach to its logical conclusion.

What makes it difficult is that the populace and the media were misled by highly effective advertising into believing that Republican malgovernance is equivalent to the actual practice of governing. To reinforce that, they're now demonstrating (very effectively) that outright obstructionism can interfere with even the best of intentions and the best of efforts to right the ship of state.